As the unmistakeable voice at the helm of Creedence Clearwater Revival, he's responsible for any number of the most enduring American rock-and-roll releases of his generation. He practically flooded the market with masterworks in 1969 — "Bayou Country," "Green River" and "Willy and the Poor Boys."

So it's kind of odd to hear John Fogerty refer to last year's "Wrote a Song for Everyone" — on which he's joined by Kid Rock, the Foo Fighters, My Morning Jacket and others in revisiting a handful of his most beloved songs — as "probably my best album."

A far more soft-spoken interview subject than a person who'd recently listened to "Fortunate Son" could possibly imagine, he says, "I just love that whole album and the feelings around it. Those artists are people I'm very much a fan of. I buy their records, follow their careers. It's people I wanted to work with because, in the first place, I admire what they do.

"So getting to do my old songs while collaborating with wonderful artists and trying to envision a new way of approaching a song I had written a while ago, there were a lot of great, wonderful warm feelings."

The album features several contemporary country artists — from Brad Paisley to Zac Brown Band, Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and Alan Jackson, the last of whom inspires Fogerty to remark that recording with him was a bit like "having Lincoln on your record."

It makes sense that the head of the swampiest roots revivalists in San Francisco's psychedelic heyday would have an affinity for country.

"I've had a love of country music that goes back a long way," Fogerty says. "I think about what I listened to growing up and the radio was really different than it is now. So many of the great songs that we may look back now and call country were played on the radio right next to Elvis Presley and the Beatles."

His guitar style, in particular, is steeped in country music.

"I remember hearing Buck Owens on the rock-and-roll stations," he says. "And if the artist had a sound like Buck, who, of course, featured Don Rich on guitar, my ear just gravitated to that record. I wanted to know what those guys were doing. And a lot of other people, like George Harrison and Tom Petty, they were listening to a lot of these country guys because they couldn't help it."

Southern sounds in general have always played a huge role in Fogerty's music.

"When I went to the very first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony," he says, "they were inducting 10 artists, and I looked up at the pictures of each artist and went, 'Yeah, he's from the South. He's from the South.' The only one I didn't know about was Sam Cooke. So when I went home, because it wasn't like the Internet in the phone the way it is now, I found out he was from Georgia, and I went, 'You see? I rest my case.' "

The singer's love of Southern culture ran much deeper than the music, from the writing of Mark Twain to "the funny way people talk in a Tennessee Williams play with all those cute little colloquialisms."

And that couldn't help but work its way into the lyrics.

"About the time I wrote 'Porterville' and certainly when I wrote 'Proud Mary,' I became my own voice rather than this guy trying to do Top 40 covers," Fogerty says. "And when that happened, there was a lot of Southern culture in me."

He also started weighing in on social issues of the day on such classics as "Fortunate Son" and "Effigy."

Fogerty credits Pete Seeger with having inspired that side of his muse.

"As Pete Seeger's influence and celebrity rose in the '50s," he says, "my mom was very much a fan, and I began to hear these songs like 'If I Had a Hammer.' I was lucky because there was the folk boom in the '50s. My mother took me to several folk festivals in Berkeley. So you're sort of being exposed to lots of music, lots of philosophy.

"Folk music by nature tends to be kind of left-leaning because it's about the downtrodden and trying to better the condition of unfortunate people or people who are being taken advantage of, which tends to be a liberal point of view. I've long wanted to, maybe in disguise, make what might be a conservative political folk album but you'd have a hard time writing a song about 'Where Do I Put My Diamond Necklace?' "

Because they had so many hits, from "Suzie Q" in 1968 to "Someday Never Comes" four years later, CCR were often thought of as a singles band — despite a string of classic albums. Which was fine with Fogerty.

"It didn't bother me," he says. "I know some of the guys in the band tried to counterreact by appearing in Rolling Stone and saying hip things (laughs). But then when I had my comeback with 'Centerfield,' years later, the culture had changed. All these writers were interviewing me, saying, 'John, isn't it funny that now people have decided that Creedence made these great albums?' And I would answer, 'Well, the album didn't change. You guys changed around it.' "

Just last year, John Fogerty revisited a handful of the greatest songs he ever wrote for Creedence Clearwater Revival on the aptly titled "Wrote a Song For Everyone," which he considers his best album. These are our picks for the 15 best CCR singles, including several he featured on that album.